Polyphony; Setting Up Your Footswitches - Alternate Mode malletKAT PRO With Sounds Manual

5. Basic Setups

POLYPHONY:

SETTING UP YOUR FOOTSWITCHES:

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Each of the 2 Controllers can be Monophonic or Polyphonic. You
would select Monophonic if you want to play lead lines with
sounds that have long sustains. If these sounds are played
polyphonically, the sounds will "bleed" together when you
play a fast melodic run and not sound right. Also, when you are
using sounds of instruments that are intrinsically monophonic
like brass and woodwind sounds, they will sound the most
realistic when you play them monophonically.
Otherwise, you will select your sounds to be Polyphonic. Your
malletKAT PRO is fully polyphonic - meaning there is no limit
to the number of different notes that can be playing at one time.
The limit here is going to be the polyphony of your sound source.
The polyphony of sound sources typically range from 8 to 32
notes polyphony. Your internal sound source is 32 notes
polyphonic.
There is one more issue with polyphony - polyphony per note.
Here you have a choice in the Auxiliary Setup settings of
selecting 1 or 2 note polyphony per pad. When you roll on a
pad, the sound will be more pleasing if those repeated sounds
overlap. However, as of this writing, none of the present sound
sources seem to respond well to this. When sound sources
advance to the point of handling same note polyphony
properly, your malletKAT PRO will be ready. In the mean
time the best setting here is generally 1.
As was mentioned earlier, your main method for varying the sustain of
the notes you play is using the sustain footswitches. The use of the
footswitches is independently assignable in each Setup.
For basic setups you will simply select one footswitch to do sustain for
the one Controller (probably Controller 1) you are using.
When you start doing more advanced Setups (see next Chapter) you
will assign the other footswitch to control sustain for the other
Controller (probably Controller 2).
Another advanced feature, the Hang Mode, is controlled by Sustain
Footswitch 2, see p.40-p.41 for more details.
The assignments for your footswitches are Setup Auxiliary settings. To
access them see p.22.